Jerusalem
by Soz
Summary: March, 2002. AU. Voldemort has taken over the Ministry, yet Harry Potter still doggedly remains the Boy who Lived. It's up to his best friend to bring about his death.
1. Prologue

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DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

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JERUSALEM, _prologue_

Somewhere off the coast of England. March 28, 2002.

__

People always ask me, "Do you know Harry Potter?" 

"Harry Potter," they persist, "You know, he's really where it's at—he's the flavor of the week, the prophet of this month's generation and jeez, I'll never ever forget him even if, God help me, I live to be six hundred and sixty six." 

Although it's desperately hard for me to remain so bloody apathetic in the face of their blind adoration, I always without fail, reply, "Harry who?" 

I think I feign ignorance because I enjoy catching the lemmings by surprise. I get a sick sort of thrill from watching their blank expressions change from ones of inane adoration to a pathetic deer in the headlights look, because, you see, they're operating under the impressed that there is no one, not one hapless soul under the sun who has not heard of their precious Mr. Potter. 

But playing dumb is a double-edged sword, Harry, because they're always willing to enlighten me about you, enlighten me, a poor heathen soul languishing in the darkness, whose only chance for salvation is to run naked into the baptismal ray of light shining out the crack between your pearly cheeks. 

Some asshole said let there be light and then God created Harry Potter. 

Funnily enough, it's always about you, Harry, when strictly speaking, its not supposed to be about you at all. You see, Harry, you're a wanted man. Personal relationships tend to get a wee bit complicated when you have a 300 million galleon bounty on your head, but you're up to the challenge, aren't you? If anyone can do it, it's you. But you don't need such empty reassurances; you're Harry Fucking Potter and when God said let there be light he got you instead. You're the celestial glue holding all of us together. 

Glue can really fuck you up, you know. If you sniff it long enough, it eats tunnels through your brain, big empty tunnels so if you really really wanted to, you could shrink yourself and scream something into the moth-eaten lump that had once been your medulla oblongata _and hear it echoing out through the network of tunnels in your right frontal lobe. Glue eats so many holes in your brain that it looks like you have a moldy hunk of Swiss cheese, instead of an organ, resting between your temples. _

Temple. That's what its like living with you, Harry. Forget the Odd Couple, living under your roof is like trying to sleep in a fucking temple. There are people prostrating themselves on the ground all over the living room rug when I want to watch the Price is Right, some really desperate unemployed musicians without a treble cleft of talent (Ha ha, people like that make me laugh-- doncha wish you listened to your mother and gotten that economics major? Selling out puts bread in your belly. Self-righteousness is an empty emotion, isn't it Harry? Look where it got you.) singing hymns of adoration in your honor. The hymns, if you can even call them that, sound like they were written by Berlioz on crack, which trust me, is pretty fucking scary. Berlioz makes Ozzy Ozbourne looks like a nancy-wancy pansy and when you throw crack into the picture things just spiral down and out of the bathtub of control, down the plug, down through the pipes, down, down , down and out to the front stoop which is chock full of sick bastards waiting for you Harry. They're so ill they're shedding five-inch pieces of their skin, but still begging, forever begging for you to heal them until their lips fall off and they can't beg anymore. 

Your temple makes me sick, Harry. It makes me feel like going out and rolling in the mud while committing sixteen mortal sins. Afterwards I'll go bathe in a tub of vodka and screw my own mother, just so I can feel like a human being—just so I can feel alive. 

You're driving me to this, Harry. You're driving me to ruin. 

You should have never left Godric's Hollow. They should have abandoned you, not on Dursley's doorstep, but in the ruins of your father's house, a squalling babe in the ashes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, everything tends towards entropy and within a short while your wails would have turned to sobs, your sobs to cries, your cries to whispers, and your whispers to silence. 

It would have been better that way.

People always ask me, "Do you know Harry Potter?" 

And do you know what I say Golden Boy, do you know what I say in the face of that blind adoration? 

"I did." 

I did, I really did. Sometimes I think I still do, sometimes I can se a glimmer of life in your oh-so-saintly green eyes, but then you freeze back into a medieval effigy, an immaculate plywood halo nailed into the back of your oaken skull, your inanimate hands extended in blessing, yet bestowing nothing upon your flock except an empty promise—and an even bigger lie. 

It's not that I object to blind adoration. It can be quite useful, especially when you're trying to get laid with a firefly girl half your age, but I do have a problem when the adoration begins to consume the object of affection from the inside out, until he becomes a hollow effigy of what he once believed with every fiber of his being—until he accepts the lies his fans are spouting, their inane praise, their legends, until he becomes the head priest in his very own Cult of Majesty. 

It's only since blind adoration has stolen your soul that I have a problem, Harry. 

And if you can't see the way, Harry, who can?

And if you believe the lies Harry, where lies the truth?

And if you don't know what's right Harry, who is to stop you from doing what's wrong?

And am I the only one cursed to understand that you don't know the way, don't know the left from the right, yet still doggedly ignoring the wrong?

Am I the only one cursed to see that you're just as blind as the rest of us? 

Don't make me do it, Harry, don't make me destroy your temple, don't make me cast out your followers and pull down your altar. But thou shalt not have any false gods—even thyself. 

Even thyself. 

"Hey man, do you know Harry Potter?" 

Ron Weasley pulled the cigarette from between his lips and with one flick of his wrist, scattered the ash across the chipped sidewalk, watching the brief glimmers of light flare up for one brief moment of fleeting glory, then fade away into nothingness. 

It took him a while to reply and that was only after he raised the cigarette to his lips and exhaled slowly, smoke curling gray around his head of red hair, forming the horrible travesty of a halo. "Harry who?" 


	2. Part 1

**TITLE:** JERUSALEM (1/2)

**AUTHOR NAME**: Soz

**AUTHOR EMAIL:**

**CATEGORY:** Angst/Darkfic

**KEYWORDS: **Ron, Harry, Hermione, Post Hogwarts, AU

**RATING:** R

**SPOILERS:** All books

**SUMMARY:** March, 2002. AU. Voldemort has taken over the Ministry, yet Harry Potter still doggedly remains the Boy who Lived. It's up to his best friend to bring about his death.

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This was largely inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and I do not own the rights to that either. Jesus Christ Superstar was in turn inspired by the Passion story from the Bible, which I am making no claims of ownership upon.

**A/N:** I found this scribbled on some notebook paper under my bed when I was cleaning my room.

**JERUSALEM**, _Part 1_

_March 28, 2002._

_Somewhere off the coast of England._

There are murders and then there are mercy killings and I sat convincing myself the former was the latter as I stared into the eyes that would nail you up and run a spear through your side before their conscience so much as blinked.

They take hate seriously, those grey eyes. So seriously, Harry, I'd take a care, because they are pale with hate, a hate tempered to a point so razor-fine its beautiful and seductive and I have trouble remembering I came here because I myself wanted to, no that's wrong, that's not what I meant. I came here because I myself needed to.

I'm telling you, Harry. Know thy enemy, Harry, for thy enemy knows thou—he knows thou like a man knows his own brother—and he hums with the expectation of fratricide.

He knows where you lived, how you look, what you do. He knows your birthday and your telephone number too.

He knows that you can't drive and he knows how you take tea. He knows when you're asleep there's no waking you up. I don't have to tell him this. He knows how you walk, a shuffle step, shuffle step loping forward easily, an equally natural grin on your face because you're loved and you know it and it twists you, twists on the inside until even your lips begin to show the disease, twitching upward in the perversion of a frown.

He knows that you believe in love, hope and other fallacies. I don't have to tell him this. He knows you spread the doctrine of forgiveness because you're too afraid to take the bull by the horns and vault over the stretch of sea that separates you from perchance your death, but at least your honor (old sport, old chum, old buddy, what what) because your words of peace are a poor excuse for cowardice. You see, Harry, I'm telling you, Harry, if you don't seek out vengeance, vengeance of a sort will find you.

And vengeance of a sort knows your favorite movie (It's a Wonderful Life) and that you still dream of catching the snitch faster than him. He knows what kind of jam you prefer (none at all, just a little pat of butter), and when you first awake (6 AM) and who you fucked the night before. It doesn't matter much on that front, Harry? Hermione or Hermione or someone else. You like her for one night of monogamy as long as she's sweet and clean and giddy.

You have to see, Harry, beneath that scarred head and waxen green eyes, all he can see if empty hypocrisy, truth eaten away by the whispering voices of a thousand adoring apostles, drunk with your glory, sheep in your flock. But you're not just the shepherd, Harry. You're the pasture, and you've been eaten bare.

I don't have to tell him this.

You disgust him, you know. He can hardly bare to watch you but he, like Hermione, like the rest of them, is drawn to you like moth to flame—aware and unable to avert his own destruction, damnation, whatever, that's not what I meant to say, who cares, they both start with D.

Every single inch of him is piqued, piqued and primed with the expectation of fratricide for if he himself must die then you will go with him, if not for his own sake then for the sake of the others you have yet to convert and lure into your snare.

Or is it me that I'm talking about?

That's not what I meant to say. I don't have to tell you this.

Draco Malfoy gets out of his wingback chair (leather), walks to his plate glass window (floorlenght), sweeps a hand over the skyline and says, "I can give you any of this."

"I'm just here to talk," I reply. "I don't want it."

And he repeats, "Any of this."

And I say, "I'm just here to talk. I want nothing."

Malfoy's smile stretches across his gums. "Nothing?"

That's what I say.

And he says, "Thirty pieces of silver?"

When I get back to your house, Hermione is up and dressed and you're not and she makes me toast and I give her a jar of marmalade and she asks me where I got the money and I tell her that I'd spent the last two hours shoveling garbage.


End file.
